Successive High Priests

Famous quotes containing the words successive, high and/or priests:

    A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
    All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:
    Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation—
    Oh, why did I awake? When shall I sleep again?
    —A.E. (Alfred Edward)

    The sort of morality which the priests inculcate is a very subtle policy, far finer than the politicians’, and the world is very successfully ruled by them as the policemen.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)